


Fragments of a Life

by Syksy



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:57:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/pseuds/Syksy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some more or less significant moments in Hyzenthlay´s life, before leaving Efrafa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragments of a Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astrokath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/gifts).



> Thank you to Gonergone for betaing and for making me add that one bit.

The first time her mother tells her she is not allowed to go out, she shrugs it off. Kittens have rules, she knows, and it'll change when she grows up. It's nice and warm in the burrow with her littermates, the idea was just a passing fancy, nothing more.

She goes out at fu-Inlé and the grass is sweet, if cold. It's all still new to her, the night, its sounds and scents. An owl hoots in the distance and she instinctively crouches down. Her mother perks up her ears but does not look worried. "We're safe here, little one," she says. "Always safe, like the General promised."

 

 

She remembers that day when the guards beat her for the first time. It's not really a proper beating, just a couple of swipes and kicks, but it shocks her all the same. She knows it happens, has seen scars on others, but she didn't really think it would ever happen to her. She hadn't done anything, just loitered a moment too long when they were to go inside. The guards had been having a bad day, she guesses.

Afterwards she limps back to their burrow and her friends give her a wide berth. They don't want to be associated with a troublemaker, don't want to be singled out. Being noticed is bad, at least if you are not a buck with dreams of rank.

She understands, but can't help feeling just a little bitter. Any one of them could have been in her position. It wasn't as if she had planned to disobey. Now she almost wants to.

 

 

"El-ahrairah has had many mates, as you all know. But there was one doe who wouldn't have him, no matter how he tried." So the story begins. She hears it for the first time from a doe just a little older than herself, a huddle of youngsters listening fretfully, somehow knowing that they shouldn't get caught hearing this. She never even knew her name, she was moved to a different Mark the day after, and she never dared to ask anyone about it. The story stays with her, though, and she tells it as often and as well as she can.

´The doe asked him: “What will you do to prove to me that you will take care of me and my kittens? How will you show me that with you we would have the best chance to live and thrive? Where will you travel to find us a safe warren to live?” El-ahrairah boasted of his many travels, of his victories over elil and even Prince Rainbow himself, but he could see she was not impressed.´

The story brings her strength, makes it easier to bear this life of small insults and ever encroaching despair. It reminds her that she is important, that her wishes should matter, even if they don't. And telling it gives her, over and over again, a tiny thrill of rebellion.

 

 

When her mother dies and they don't let her go and see the body, to make it real, she finally breaks. The guards try to be kind at first, mindful of her sorrow. “It’s not your Mark’s time to go out”, they say, and: “The body will have to be removed quickly, so it doesn’t draw any elil to the warren.”

“Be reasonable,”they say, and she cannot stand it.

After that she is ready to do anything, anything at all, to break away. So when she meets a buck who speaks of dangerous things, she doesn’t even want to think about what could happen, if they don’t succeed.

 

 

Once she saw a vision of herself, on a hillside in the sunlight, with wind in her ears and all the wide world open before her. She was only a kitten then, and the memory faded, but she never completely forgot. All her life she has a feeling that that is where she belongs, where she will one day be.

It has helped her bear most things, this belief that someday all will be well. When the Council says no, it finally dies.

She looks at their faces and sees no pity. They know as well as she does that every word she and her friends have said is true, that everything is going to fall apart sooner rather than later. They just won't do anything. Like ticks on a dying rabbit, they cling to the General’s dream, whether out of fear or greed. They cannot afford pity, because then they would have to pity every rabbit in Efrafa. If this collection of cowards and monsters is the wise Council she has relied on, there really never was any hope at all. 

 

 

A shadow falls on her and she considers, just for a moment, fighting back. A week ago she would have said something, done something. But everything is so dull now, so dull and grey. What does it matter if they push her around, if they hurt her, if they order her body to perform tasks it longs for but cannot accomplish? She will live and die here, and all will be grey, grey, grey, until the end, when the rabbit that comes for her will finally be sweetly black.


End file.
